Sunday, May 29, 2011 6:53:21 AM
Joplin twister's death toll rises to 142
May 28, 2011 -- Updated 2259 GMT (0659 HKT)
(CNN) -- Missouri authorities have identified additional people killed in last weekend's tornado, bringing the toll of the United States' single deadliest twister ever recorded to 142 deaths, authorities said Saturday.
Among the dead was Will Norton, a recent high school graduate who attracted national attention when he disappeared during the storm.
The 18-year-old was driving home from his graduation Sunday when the tornado destroyed the Hummer H3 he and his father were in.
"Mark (Norton's father) said that he reached over and he grabbed Will with both of his arms ... he held on to him until he possibly couldn't anymore and so he's feeling really bad about that because as a dad you don't want to ever let go of your kids. You want to protect them forever. But at least we know that he did absolutely everything he possibly could," said Tracey Presslor, Norton's aunt, through tears.
Norton's body was found Friday by divers in a pond close to where his vehicle had been.
Meanwhile, 100 persons remain unaccounted for, the Missouri Department of Public Safety said in a statement Saturday.
Deputy Director Andrea Spillars acknowledged earlier that families are frustrated that the identification process hasn't proceeded quickly enough the past week.
Authorities are relying on a scientific identification of the remains, and while that process is slower, it's more reliable than a family member's visual identification, she said.
Authorities are using past X-rays, dental records and body markings to help identify bodies, Spillars said.
[...]
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/05/28/missouri.tornado/ [with comments]
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UPDATE 1-Death toll from Joplin tornado rises to 142
Sat May 28, 2011 7:29pm EDT
May 28 (Reuters) - The death toll from the powerful tornado that tore through the Missouri city of Joplin rose to 142 on Saturday as officials continued to identify victims, the city said.
Sunday's tornado was rated an EF-5, or the strongest possible, and is already the deadliest single twister in the United States since 1947.
The tornado injured more than 900 people, and officials said that number could be higher because some people did not go to hospitals. More than a hundred people are missing and unaccounted for, they said.
Missouri officials, who are working to identify victims, cautioned that the new death toll represented 142 sets of human remains and that there was a chance remains of one person were in more than one set.
Some families have expressed frustration at the slow pace of identifying the victims and releasing the remains and their inability to enter the morgue to view and identify them. Authorities say they need to be sure no mistakes are made.
[...]
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/28/usa-tornadoes-joplin-idUSN2814172620110528 [no comments yet]
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UPDATE: Joplin official lowers tornado death toll to 139
Posted: May 28, 2011 10:43 PM CDT
JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) - City officials in Joplin, Mo., have lowered the number of people killed by last weekend's massive tornado to 139.
Without elaboration, city manager Mark Rohr told The Associated Press late Saturday the number was down from the 142 figure he gave to reporters earlier in the day. The state of Missouri currently places the death toll at 126, saying they have no reason to raise that number.
The state says there are 142 sets of human remains at the morgue handling those killed by the storm, and some could be from the same victim.
On Saturday night, the Department of Public Safety made public a list of 73 people who had been confirmed dead and whose next of kin had been notified.
There are also 100 people still considered missing after last Sunday's storm, which swept away homes and businesses across the city's south side. Many of those listed as missing could be among the dead.
Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press
http://www.kait8.com/story/14745901/update-joplin-official-lowers-tornado-death-toll-to-139
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Tornado toll 139, 105 missing
America's pain: A destroyed helicopter lies on its side in the parking lot of the Joplin Regional Medical Center. 105 people are missing as the death toll climbed to 139.
Picture: Mark Schiefelbein, Source: AP
May 29, 2011 5:59AM
THE number of people unaccounted for after Joplin's twister is 105 as work continues to identify the dead.
Earlier Saturday, Joplin city officials said the death toll had risen to 139.
Unlike city officials, however, the Missouri Department of Public Safety said they will not release a total fatality list until all human remains have been identified through dental records, x-rays and other scientific methods.
Andrea Spillars, deputy director of the public safety department, said that 48 individuals have now been confirmed dead by those means and their families have been notified.
"Currently we have 142 human remains but that includes partial remains," Spillars said. "Some of those remains may be the same person. So until we can go through the scientific process to make sure that we have identified each and every one of those individuals, we will not confirm a total fatality list."
The number of missing, meanwhile, has fallen to 105 from 156 yesterday. That latest number, however, includes nine individuals who were confirmed dead by their families. Although those individuals are assumed to be at the temporary morgue, Spillars said they will not be considered officially deceased until their remains have been scientifically identified.
She added that the total of unaccounted for individuals also includes seven new missing person reports.
Spillars also addressed questions as to why family members are not allowed into the morgue to personally identify victims, saying that visual identification is sometimes not as accurate as scientific identification. She said family members have, however, been asked to provide identifying marks and other information to help identify the dead.
"I can tell you it's a very respectful process," she said. "I can tell you that someone is with that loved one every step of the way."
She said the highway patrol is working around the clock to personally notify victims' families when remains are identified and has assigned more than 50 troopers to the task.
The twister, which struck the city on May 22, was the single deadliest tornado recorded since the National Weather Service began tracking such information in 1950.
President Barack Obama will visit Joplin today to survey the damage and attend a memorial service for those killed in the storm.
© Herald and Weekly Times
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/ipad/tornado-toll-139-105-missing/story-fn6s850w-1226064860003
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Macabre body ID process adds to Joplin's pain
A spray-painted message sums up the helplessness -- and hope -- some feel in Joplin, Missouri, after a tornado hit the city.
May 28th, 2011
12:39 AMET
A Newton County, Missouri, official said authorities would begin streamlining the process of identifying bodies Saturday in Joplin in the aftermath of a killer tornado.
"The decision was made that if a person can make a positive ID, let’s say for instance … piercings or tattoos," said Mark Bridges of the Newton County, Missouri, coroner’s office, "[Saturday] we’re gonna start the process of allowing those people to view the bodies of the loved ones."
"We’re going to go ahead and start releasing those bodies," he said.
Already frayed nerves reached a boiling point Friday in Joplin, Missouri, as families trying to retrieve their dead loved ones were stalled by cautious medical examiners meticulously trying to sort remains.
[...]
While acknowledging families’ frustration, Bridges told CNN’s Eliott Spitzer [ http://inthearena.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/27/agitated-relatives-push-for-body-ids/ ] that they were making “good progress” in identifying bodies.
Bridges said the coroners were trying to avoid a horror that had unfortunately already taken place.
“The situation that we had early on is we had some family members that made identification on an individual and they got him to a mortuary, got him embalmed, got him dressed and when they went back [to prepare visitation services] it was not their son,” he said. “So the Jasper County Coroner ... clamped it [streamlined identification] down at that time.”
But that was little comfort for residents like Divine Akino, who lost her mother in the twister.
The Kansas City, Missouri, resident said her mother’s body was released Friday morning, one of the first, but only after days of agonizing bureaucratic red tape.
“We just want to claim our dead bodies,” Akino said. “It was a little frustrating because we kept asking them, ‘Where is the help that we’re getting?' " she said, referring to the coroner's office. "Is this where our tax dollars are going?”
Akino said her mother was worshipping at the evening service at Harmony Heights Baptist Church when the tornado tore the walls down.
Drawn to the Bible's message of salvation, Grace Akino was a religious woman, her daughter said.
“She named me Divine because I was the first born. She and my dad met through a missionary in the Philippines,” she said.
Grace Akino's body was found covering her 12-year-son, who survived, Divine Akino said.
A visitation service for Grace Akino drew more than 200 people late Friday, her daughter said.
© 2011 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/28/macabre-body-id-process-adds-to-joplins-pain/ [with comments]
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Amid loss in Joplin, deep love
The bathtub at 2020 Mississippi Ave. was where Don Lansaw Jr. lost his life last Sunday, protecting his wife Bethany from flying debris as a tornado hit their Joplin, Mo., home. He was, Bethany says, “the pure definition of a man.”
Beth Lansaw shared memories of her son, Don Lansaw Jr., who was killed during Sunday evening’s tornado in Joplin, Mo. She said she taught her son not to back down from a fight.
Donald Lansaw Jr. shielded his wife Bethany from flying debris in the Joplin tornado.
By KENT BABB
The Kansas City Star
Posted on Fri, May. 27, 2011 11:21 PM
JOPLIN, Mo. | In their last moments together, Bethany Lansaw couldn’t see her husband’s face.
Her ears heard the commotion surrounding her, a massive tornado ripping through their home and much of southern Joplin. Her body felt the pressure of her husband’s 250 pounds; she lay in their bathtub, and with a layer of pillows between them, Don Lansaw draped himself over Bethany, using his body to shield his 26-year-old wife.
When the tornado passed, the unimaginable destruction done, she removed the pillows and began lifting herself from the tub. Finally her eyes could see.
She saw a home destroyed. Walls had been blown away; photographs and trinkets from five years of marriage had disappeared inside a sea of wreckage. Then she looked toward Don, the burly former high-school football player who had always seemed invincible.
He had suffered a deep wound to his side. While he shielded her, something had punctured his abdomen. Bethany saw Don, 31, lie on the floor. She ran to get help, but by the time she returned, her husband had died.
He had traded his life, she said, to save hers.
•••
In the old days, the boys would go looking for storms like this. Don and his younger brother, Zach, climbed inside Don’s Jeep a few years ago and headed west. They’d heard there was a nasty storm near Pittsburg, Kan., and if they hurried, maybe they would see a funnel cloud.
They listened to the radio and took back roads, amateur storm chasers trying to see something worth remembering.
“Just country boys,” Zach, 29, said this week. “Best thing in the world to us was a real nice lightning storm.”
The storm passed without producing a tornado, and the brothers returned to southwest Missouri. Don always did like an adventure. Fear wasn’t part of his wiring. While he was in high school in Seneca, 20 miles south of Joplin, there was a bully who was relentless to other kids.
The young man picked on his classmates, and one day, Don had enough. He challenged the bully to meet him to see how tough he really was. The other boy never showed up, and after that, the bullying stopped.
“I told him don’t start a fight,” Don’s mother, Beth, said, “but don’t back down from one.”
Don was big, a defensive tackle at Seneca High, but those who knew him best say that his body carried a gentle soul. He once noticed a woman walking without a jacket on a cold day. Don wasn’t far from his car, so why not give the woman the shirt off his back? He walked over, peeled off the shirt, and handed it over. He believed she needed it more than him.
It was that kind of sensibility that separated him years ago from the other broad-shouldered bouncers at the Jukebox bar. Bethany was there one night, and mutual friends introduced her to Don. She noticed something about him immediately.
“A gentleman,” she said this week. “The pure definition of a man.”
•••
They would’ve been married six years in July. Bethany said most days were sweet when they were together, and much of this past Sunday was no different. She had gone to see a play in nearby Carthage, and then she and Don met for frozen yogurt in Joplin.
When they returned to their home near the corner of 20th Street and Mississippi Avenue, Bethany said, the sky was greenish gray. They were watching television as the storm approached and the tornado sirens sounded.
Bethany said that she and Don saw the tornado closing in and had only a few seconds to decide what they’d do. Their house had no basement, and she said there wasn’t an opportunity to reach the crawlspace on the home’s rear.
“There was just no time,” she said. “It was just that fast.”
The safest place, she said, was the bathtub. She grabbed the pillows from their bed and brought them into the bathroom. She lay in the tub, and he quickly arranged the pillows on top of her.
As the tornado arrived and the home’s wood shutters began to fly, Don pressed himself on top of his wife, holding onto the tub’s rails as the storm came through.
•••
Three days later, two walls were left standing on the Lansaws’ home, and their possessions were strewn throughout the yard — fragments left from a house and two lives. Magazines and dresser drawers, clothes and a cardboard box labeled from when couple moved in. There wasn’t much left to the bathroom; the tub was still there, but it had become dislodged from the wall and had been filled with debris.
Bethany said she doesn’t know what caused her husband’s injury, saying that she noticed minutes after rising from the tub that he was hurt. Her voice trembling, Bethany said she’ll forever be uncertain if they could’ve prepared for the storm differently.
“For the rest of my life,” she said, “I’m going to wonder if that was the best decision. But it was the only decision that we could make.”
Bethany suffered only scrapes and bruises. She said there’s no doubt that, if her husband hadn’t shielded her, they both would’ve died. But, she said, Don wouldn’t allow that.
“He sacrificed himself for me,” she said. “If you talk to anybody who knows me, you know he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. As many times as people say that, it doesn’t make it easier to comprehend. But I’m always going to remember him as my hero.”
To reach Kent Babb, call 816-234-4386 or send e-mail to kbabb@kcstar.com.
Copyright 2011 The Kansas City Star
http://www.kansascity.com/2011/05/27/2909639/amid-loss-in-joplin-pure-love.html [with comments]
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Husband gave life to save wife from tornado
May 29, 2011
http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=241615
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Toll of 'deadliest' US tornado hits 142
May 28, 2011
http://www.presstv.com/detail/182205.html
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Doppler Radar - Joplin Missouri EF-5 Tornado - Sunday May 22, 2011
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May 22 Tornado Joplin, MO
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May 22 Tornado Joplin, MO
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Security cams catch a twister on tape
Added On May 24, 2011
Security cameras record damage from a tornado in Kansas [the day before Joplin]. KTKA has more [ http://www.ktka.com/news/2011/may/23/security-camera-records-devastation-reading-tornad/ ].
http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2011/05/23/ks.security.cam.tornado.ktka
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Up until 1940s, Americans didn't even get tornado forecasts
A Kansas tornado in 1959, less than a decade after the Weather Bureau began issuing tornado forecasts.
By Sean Morris, CNN
May 24, 2011 -- Updated 1453 GMT (2253 HKT)
(CNN) -- The warnings seem almost ubiquitous today in this world of Doppler Radar and instant communication, but the word "tornado" actually used to be banned in weather forecasts.
Before the 1950s, there were no warnings that a tornado was about to occur.
"That's when the warning system we have now was just being developed," said Bob Henson of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.
"Most Americans never got a tornado warning," he said.
But what about radar?
"There was no radar," he said.
Before that, Americans had to endure decades of agonizing blows from Mother Nature, many of the victims taken unaware.
In 1882, 17 years after the Civil War ended, U.S. Army Signal Corps Sgt. John P. Finley was asked to investigate tornadoes and how they developed.
As Finley was doing his research, tornado forecasting came to a screeching halt when the Signal Corps banned the word "tornado" from official forecasts because they were concerned the word would cause widespread panic.
"They literally avoided the word up until the 1950s or so," Henson said. "They were a little concerned about the panic or the tools weren't strong enough to predict them," he said, "and quite frankly without radar, you couldn't forecast them."
Twisters were not measured in the same way they are now. Thus, experts now don't know whether the 1925 Tri-State tornado -- which killed about 695 people when it tore through Missouri, Illinois and Indiana -- was actually a single funnel or many, which is why it isn't officially considered the deadliest single tornado.
So the emphasis went on observing and reporting rather than forecasting.
The U.S. Weather Bureau started reporting tornadoes, thunderstorms, hailstorms, lightning and high winds at a few experimental locations across the United States in spring 1943. Gradually, forecasters started issuing forecasts for severe thunderstorms, but could not tell the time nor place.
As for tornado forecasts? Still off-limits.
A breakthrough happened in the late 1940s, when two Air Force officers identified conditions that were favorable for tornado formation in the southern Plains.
The first tornado forecast was issued March 20, 1948.
Six hours later, a twister slammed into Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. The tornado caused $6 million in damage, but no one was killed, thanks to a tornado safety plan that was implemented at the base after the forecast was issued.
The tornado bulletin brought the Air Force attention from the public and local media. However, tornado forecasts were only available to Air Force weather offices and were still not issued by the Weather Bureau.
Then came Radio Detection and Ranging, or radar.
During World War II, radar was invented to detect enemy ships and aircraft. Radar operators soon began to notice that rain would often obscure aircraft. This led to using radar to detect storms that could produce tornadoes.
Finally, in 1950, the ban on the word "tornado" in weather forecasts was lifted.
That was the same year official federal records about tornadoes -- in terms of their location, strength and damage inflicted -- were first kept.
In 1953, the U.S. Weather Bureau established the Severe Local Storms Center, known as SELS. The first tornado watches issued by SELS usually covered an average area of 27,000 square miles. Today, tornado and severe thunderstorm watches average 25,000 square miles.
In 1966, SELS was renamed the National Severe Storms Forecast Center. At this time, tornado and severe thunderstorm forecasts were renamed "watches" to correspond with products issued by the National Hurricane Center.
In the early 1990s, Doppler Weather Radar, or as it was more commonly known, Next Generation Weather Radar, was deployed at local National Weather Service forecast offices nationwide. Doppler radar allowed forecasters to see more than just precipitation. With the new radar, they could actually detect wind circulations within storms that could lead to tornado formation. Doppler weather radar was part of a wider modernization of forecast offices nationwide lasting nearly a decade.
"Today forecasters use a comprehensive system (to detect storms) but radar is the foundation because radar detects the circulation of winds that form tornadoes," Henson said. "Hand in hand with that are people on the ground who are trained storm-spotters. You always need eyes on the storm," he said.
After the deployment of Doppler weather radar, lead times for tornadoes were nearly doubled, from less than five minutes to around 10 to 13 minutes.
In October 1995, the National Severe Storms Forecast Center was renamed the Storm Prediction Center [ http://www.spc.noaa.gov/ ], and as part of the weather service's modernization program, the Storm Prediction Center was moved to Norman, Oklahoma.
Today, the Storm Prediction Center issues forecasts for severe thunderstorms as far as eight days out and is tasked with issuing severe thunderstorm and tornado watches in the United States.
Tornado warnings are issued by local National Weather Service forecast offices.
Even though forecasters can now identify conditions favorable for tornadoes, they still cannot predict exactly when and where tornadoes will touch down.
There lies the rub. Officials in Joplin, Missouri, confirmed at least 116 people dead after a twister smashed the city Sunday. Destructive tornadoes and severe storms tore through the South in late April, killing hundreds of people.
With all the advancements in storm technology, the question is simple: Why?
"That's the question of 2011," Henson said. "Why have so many people died in these tornadoes? That's the open question. It's partly because of the strength of these tornadoes. Also because they've hit populated areas."
While tools such as Doppler Radar detect winds within severe storms that could indicate a tornado may be imminent, many of these rotating storms do not go on to produce tornadoes.
Although tornado forecasting has remarkably improved over the last two decades with advanced forecasting techniques, weather satellites, numerical forecast models and Doppler weather radar, there is much about tornado forecasting that still remains a mystery.
Journalist Craig Johnson contributed to this report.
© 2011 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/05/23/tornado.history/index.html [with comments]
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Science Can't Design Away Tornadoes' Deadly Threat
by The Associated Press
WASHINGTON May 28, 2011, 10:38 pm ET
Storm science has greatly improved tornado warnings in recent years. But if that's led anyone into a sense of security, that feeling has taken a beating in recent weeks.
Super Outbreak 2011, on April 25-28, killed more than 300 people in the South and Midwest. Less than a month later, a devastating tornado took more than 120 lives around Joplin, Mo. This now could be the deadliest year for tornadoes since 1950, based on an assessment of National Weather Service figures.
This despite warnings of as much as 20 minutes, thanks to improved weather radar installed across the country in the 1990s. Before that, tornado warnings often weren't issued until a twister was sighted on the ground.
Scientists see a variety of factors that helped make this year's twisters deadlier — from La Nina to public complacency, from global warming to urban sprawl.
"We thought for the longest time physical science could get us by ... that we could design out of disaster," said meteorology professor Walker Ashley of Northern Illinois University. Now scientists are finding they need to take human nature into account.
What is clear is that certain factors add to the risk of death. The most vulnerable folks are those living in mobile homes and houses without basements. For a variety of reasons, a lot of homes don't have basements.
Twisters occurring on weekends — like the Joplin tornado — and at night tend to be greater killers because they catch people at home. At night, twisters are harder to see and sleeping people may not hear a warning.
Those less likely to be killed in a storm tend to be more educated and to have a plan in place beforehand.
In Sedalia, Mo., 30-year-old Sean McCabe had the right idea when the tornado struck, heading to the basement. He said the storm shoved him down the final flight of steps. He had scrapes and cuts on his hands, wrists, back and feet. Blood was visible in the house, and much of the roof of the house was gone.
"I saw little debris and then I saw big debris, and I'm like OK, let's go," said McCabe.
Having a plan was a lifesaver for Tuscaloosa's LaRocca Nursing Home in Alabama. As the storm howled, four dozen residents massed in the hallways as trees crashed down and a cloud of dust rained upon them. When the dust settled, the staff realized their drills had paid off. Not one patient was killed, and the worst injury among them was a bruise.
Hundreds have not been so lucky. The death toll reported Saturday by the city of Joplin stands at 139, which if correct puts this year's tornado death toll at 520 — exceeding the previous highest recorded death toll in a single year of 519 in 1953. But Missouri state officials counted 126 dead, a discrepancy that left unclear whether 2011 has yet set the modern record for tornado fatalities.
There were deadlier storms before 1950, but those counts were based on estimates and not on precise figures
The National Weather Service said 58 tornadoes touched down in Alabama on April 27, killing 238 people in that state alone and injuring thousands. Scores died in other states from twisters spawned by the same storm system. Put together, emergency management officials say the twisters left a path of destruction 10 miles wide and 610 miles long, or about as far as a drive from Birmingham to Columbus, Ohio.
Statewide, Alabama officials estimate there was enough debris to stack a football field a mile high with rubble.
Contributing to the massive loss of life is the growth of urban areas, suggested Marshall Shepherd, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Georgia.
"Historically, the central business districts of cities have not been hit that frequently," he explained. But as you increase the land area covered by homes and businesses, he said, "you're increasing the size of the dartboard."
An expanding population does increase exposure to the danger, agreed Ashley, who fears deaths could begin to rise in the future as a result of sprawl and more people living in vulnerable residences such as mobile homes.
If the Tuscaloosa and Joplin tornadoes had each been a few miles to the south, on farmland, little would be heard about them, Ashley said, but when extremely violent tornadoes mingle with urban sprawl "you're going to have a disaster."
"I hope this will be an outlier year, very much like Katrina was to hurricanes," he said in a telephone interview from a field trip to chase tornadoes.
But no one can guarantee that, and weather experts are becoming increasingly concerned about how people respond to tornado warnings.
"A lot of it is complacency," Ashley said. "The population seems to be becoming desensitized to nature. I don't know why."
Studies have shown that 15 to 20 minutes is the most effective amount of warning time, and longer warning times can increase deaths. Weather experts aren't sure why, but worry that people think that if a twister hasn't appeared in a certain amount of time, it must have been a false alarm.
Yet a long-track tornado can be on the ground for 30 miles.
"If you have a basement, you don't need 20 minutes warning, but if you are in a mobile home park you may need more than 20 minutes to find a shelter," commented Alan W. Black, a University of Georgia doctoral student and co-author with Ashley of a recent study of tornado and wind fatalities.
Jerry Brotzge, a research scientist at the Center for Analysis & Prediction of Storms, University of Oklahoma, said many people who hear warnings will look outside to see if they can see the tornado — "they need some kind of confirmation, they want to see it."
But the Joplin tornado was at least partly rain-wrapped, meaning that a powerful rainstorm obscured it from some directions and "they wouldn't have seen it coming."
"Even when people are sheltered in their homes, if they are not underground they can die," Brotzge added.
But asking people to evacuate an area is also a difficult decision, he said, "what if you have a traffic jam and the tornado hits that."
Ashley concluded: "The take-home is, people have to take personal responsibility for their lives."
Why there have been so many tornado threats this year is harder to say.
Viewing pictures of the tornado aftermath it's hard to overestimate the power of such storms, and records bear out how strong they can be.
"You see pictures of World War II, the devastation and all that with the bombing. That's really what it looked like," said Kerry Sachetta, the principal of a flattened Joplin High School. "I couldn't even make out the side of the building. It was total devastation in my view. I just couldn't believe what I saw."
And that movie image a few years ago was no joke: A cow was transported 10 miles by a twister in Iowa in 1878 and a tornado in Minnesota moved a headstone three miles in 1886.
One Joplin resident said a picture that was sucked off his house's wall was found in Springfield, 70 miles away. An insurance policy was found more than 40 miles from its original residence in Oklahoma in 1957 and a 210-mile trip was taken by a canceled check in Nebraska in 1915, according to a study several years ago by researchers at the University of Oklahoma and St. Louis University [and see the first item in the post to which this is a reply, and (items linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=62428465 and preceding].
Typically, tornadoes spawn in the clash between warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico and cooler, dry air from the north and west — conditions that mark Tornado Alley in the Midwest and South, the most common breeding grounds for twisters.
Factors in this year's excess may include La Nina, a periodic cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean which can affect weather worldwide. In a La Nina year there tend to be more tornadoes than average. If that is a factor, the good news is that La Nina is weakening and is expected to end in a month or so.
The meandering jet stream high in the atmosphere that directs the movements of weather also has been in a pattern that encourages warm Gulf air to move in and clash with drier air masses.
While studies of global warming have suggested it could cause more and stronger storms, National Weather Service Director Jack Hayes isn't ready to blame climate change — at least not yet — saying it's too soon to link individual events with the ongoing warming.
Tornado researcher Howard B. Bluestein of the University of Oklahoma says his best guess is this unusual outburst of twisters is due to natural variability of the weather.
"Sometimes you get a weather pattern in which the ingredients for a tornado are there over a wide area and persist for a long time. That's what we're having this year," he said.
"If we see this happen next year and the following year and the following year," then maybe climate change could be to blame, he said.
Whatever the reasons it's an extraordinary year for tornadoes and the worst may not be over. May is usually the peak month, but June traditionally gets lots of twisters, and they can occur in any month.
"You can never completely breathe easy," concluded Russell Schneider, director of the government's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.
Associated Press writers Nomaan Merchant, Alan Scher Zagier and Jim Salter in Joplin, Mo.; Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Ala.; and Kristi Eaton in Norman, Okla., contributed to this report.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=136743037 [no comments yet]
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2011 Tornado Fatality Information
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/torn/2011deadlytorn.html
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more at (items linked in) the posts preceding (and the inevitable posts to follow) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=63682547 (the above as originally posted over at Tornado Alley)
May 28, 2011 -- Updated 2259 GMT (0659 HKT)
(CNN) -- Missouri authorities have identified additional people killed in last weekend's tornado, bringing the toll of the United States' single deadliest twister ever recorded to 142 deaths, authorities said Saturday.
Among the dead was Will Norton, a recent high school graduate who attracted national attention when he disappeared during the storm.
The 18-year-old was driving home from his graduation Sunday when the tornado destroyed the Hummer H3 he and his father were in.
"Mark (Norton's father) said that he reached over and he grabbed Will with both of his arms ... he held on to him until he possibly couldn't anymore and so he's feeling really bad about that because as a dad you don't want to ever let go of your kids. You want to protect them forever. But at least we know that he did absolutely everything he possibly could," said Tracey Presslor, Norton's aunt, through tears.
Norton's body was found Friday by divers in a pond close to where his vehicle had been.
Meanwhile, 100 persons remain unaccounted for, the Missouri Department of Public Safety said in a statement Saturday.
Deputy Director Andrea Spillars acknowledged earlier that families are frustrated that the identification process hasn't proceeded quickly enough the past week.
Authorities are relying on a scientific identification of the remains, and while that process is slower, it's more reliable than a family member's visual identification, she said.
Authorities are using past X-rays, dental records and body markings to help identify bodies, Spillars said.
[...]
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/05/28/missouri.tornado/ [with comments]
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UPDATE 1-Death toll from Joplin tornado rises to 142
Sat May 28, 2011 7:29pm EDT
May 28 (Reuters) - The death toll from the powerful tornado that tore through the Missouri city of Joplin rose to 142 on Saturday as officials continued to identify victims, the city said.
Sunday's tornado was rated an EF-5, or the strongest possible, and is already the deadliest single twister in the United States since 1947.
The tornado injured more than 900 people, and officials said that number could be higher because some people did not go to hospitals. More than a hundred people are missing and unaccounted for, they said.
Missouri officials, who are working to identify victims, cautioned that the new death toll represented 142 sets of human remains and that there was a chance remains of one person were in more than one set.
Some families have expressed frustration at the slow pace of identifying the victims and releasing the remains and their inability to enter the morgue to view and identify them. Authorities say they need to be sure no mistakes are made.
[...]
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/28/usa-tornadoes-joplin-idUSN2814172620110528 [no comments yet]
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UPDATE: Joplin official lowers tornado death toll to 139
Posted: May 28, 2011 10:43 PM CDT
JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) - City officials in Joplin, Mo., have lowered the number of people killed by last weekend's massive tornado to 139.
Without elaboration, city manager Mark Rohr told The Associated Press late Saturday the number was down from the 142 figure he gave to reporters earlier in the day. The state of Missouri currently places the death toll at 126, saying they have no reason to raise that number.
The state says there are 142 sets of human remains at the morgue handling those killed by the storm, and some could be from the same victim.
On Saturday night, the Department of Public Safety made public a list of 73 people who had been confirmed dead and whose next of kin had been notified.
There are also 100 people still considered missing after last Sunday's storm, which swept away homes and businesses across the city's south side. Many of those listed as missing could be among the dead.
Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press
http://www.kait8.com/story/14745901/update-joplin-official-lowers-tornado-death-toll-to-139
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Tornado toll 139, 105 missing
America's pain: A destroyed helicopter lies on its side in the parking lot of the Joplin Regional Medical Center. 105 people are missing as the death toll climbed to 139.
Picture: Mark Schiefelbein, Source: AP
May 29, 2011 5:59AM
THE number of people unaccounted for after Joplin's twister is 105 as work continues to identify the dead.
Earlier Saturday, Joplin city officials said the death toll had risen to 139.
Unlike city officials, however, the Missouri Department of Public Safety said they will not release a total fatality list until all human remains have been identified through dental records, x-rays and other scientific methods.
Andrea Spillars, deputy director of the public safety department, said that 48 individuals have now been confirmed dead by those means and their families have been notified.
"Currently we have 142 human remains but that includes partial remains," Spillars said. "Some of those remains may be the same person. So until we can go through the scientific process to make sure that we have identified each and every one of those individuals, we will not confirm a total fatality list."
The number of missing, meanwhile, has fallen to 105 from 156 yesterday. That latest number, however, includes nine individuals who were confirmed dead by their families. Although those individuals are assumed to be at the temporary morgue, Spillars said they will not be considered officially deceased until their remains have been scientifically identified.
She added that the total of unaccounted for individuals also includes seven new missing person reports.
Spillars also addressed questions as to why family members are not allowed into the morgue to personally identify victims, saying that visual identification is sometimes not as accurate as scientific identification. She said family members have, however, been asked to provide identifying marks and other information to help identify the dead.
"I can tell you it's a very respectful process," she said. "I can tell you that someone is with that loved one every step of the way."
She said the highway patrol is working around the clock to personally notify victims' families when remains are identified and has assigned more than 50 troopers to the task.
The twister, which struck the city on May 22, was the single deadliest tornado recorded since the National Weather Service began tracking such information in 1950.
President Barack Obama will visit Joplin today to survey the damage and attend a memorial service for those killed in the storm.
© Herald and Weekly Times
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/ipad/tornado-toll-139-105-missing/story-fn6s850w-1226064860003
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Macabre body ID process adds to Joplin's pain
A spray-painted message sums up the helplessness -- and hope -- some feel in Joplin, Missouri, after a tornado hit the city.
May 28th, 2011
12:39 AMET
A Newton County, Missouri, official said authorities would begin streamlining the process of identifying bodies Saturday in Joplin in the aftermath of a killer tornado.
"The decision was made that if a person can make a positive ID, let’s say for instance … piercings or tattoos," said Mark Bridges of the Newton County, Missouri, coroner’s office, "[Saturday] we’re gonna start the process of allowing those people to view the bodies of the loved ones."
"We’re going to go ahead and start releasing those bodies," he said.
Already frayed nerves reached a boiling point Friday in Joplin, Missouri, as families trying to retrieve their dead loved ones were stalled by cautious medical examiners meticulously trying to sort remains.
[...]
While acknowledging families’ frustration, Bridges told CNN’s Eliott Spitzer [ http://inthearena.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/27/agitated-relatives-push-for-body-ids/ ] that they were making “good progress” in identifying bodies.
Bridges said the coroners were trying to avoid a horror that had unfortunately already taken place.
“The situation that we had early on is we had some family members that made identification on an individual and they got him to a mortuary, got him embalmed, got him dressed and when they went back [to prepare visitation services] it was not their son,” he said. “So the Jasper County Coroner ... clamped it [streamlined identification] down at that time.”
But that was little comfort for residents like Divine Akino, who lost her mother in the twister.
The Kansas City, Missouri, resident said her mother’s body was released Friday morning, one of the first, but only after days of agonizing bureaucratic red tape.
“We just want to claim our dead bodies,” Akino said. “It was a little frustrating because we kept asking them, ‘Where is the help that we’re getting?' " she said, referring to the coroner's office. "Is this where our tax dollars are going?”
Akino said her mother was worshipping at the evening service at Harmony Heights Baptist Church when the tornado tore the walls down.
Drawn to the Bible's message of salvation, Grace Akino was a religious woman, her daughter said.
“She named me Divine because I was the first born. She and my dad met through a missionary in the Philippines,” she said.
Grace Akino's body was found covering her 12-year-son, who survived, Divine Akino said.
A visitation service for Grace Akino drew more than 200 people late Friday, her daughter said.
© 2011 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/28/macabre-body-id-process-adds-to-joplins-pain/ [with comments]
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Amid loss in Joplin, deep love
The bathtub at 2020 Mississippi Ave. was where Don Lansaw Jr. lost his life last Sunday, protecting his wife Bethany from flying debris as a tornado hit their Joplin, Mo., home. He was, Bethany says, “the pure definition of a man.”
Beth Lansaw shared memories of her son, Don Lansaw Jr., who was killed during Sunday evening’s tornado in Joplin, Mo. She said she taught her son not to back down from a fight.
Donald Lansaw Jr. shielded his wife Bethany from flying debris in the Joplin tornado.
By KENT BABB
The Kansas City Star
Posted on Fri, May. 27, 2011 11:21 PM
JOPLIN, Mo. | In their last moments together, Bethany Lansaw couldn’t see her husband’s face.
Her ears heard the commotion surrounding her, a massive tornado ripping through their home and much of southern Joplin. Her body felt the pressure of her husband’s 250 pounds; she lay in their bathtub, and with a layer of pillows between them, Don Lansaw draped himself over Bethany, using his body to shield his 26-year-old wife.
When the tornado passed, the unimaginable destruction done, she removed the pillows and began lifting herself from the tub. Finally her eyes could see.
She saw a home destroyed. Walls had been blown away; photographs and trinkets from five years of marriage had disappeared inside a sea of wreckage. Then she looked toward Don, the burly former high-school football player who had always seemed invincible.
He had suffered a deep wound to his side. While he shielded her, something had punctured his abdomen. Bethany saw Don, 31, lie on the floor. She ran to get help, but by the time she returned, her husband had died.
He had traded his life, she said, to save hers.
•••
In the old days, the boys would go looking for storms like this. Don and his younger brother, Zach, climbed inside Don’s Jeep a few years ago and headed west. They’d heard there was a nasty storm near Pittsburg, Kan., and if they hurried, maybe they would see a funnel cloud.
They listened to the radio and took back roads, amateur storm chasers trying to see something worth remembering.
“Just country boys,” Zach, 29, said this week. “Best thing in the world to us was a real nice lightning storm.”
The storm passed without producing a tornado, and the brothers returned to southwest Missouri. Don always did like an adventure. Fear wasn’t part of his wiring. While he was in high school in Seneca, 20 miles south of Joplin, there was a bully who was relentless to other kids.
The young man picked on his classmates, and one day, Don had enough. He challenged the bully to meet him to see how tough he really was. The other boy never showed up, and after that, the bullying stopped.
“I told him don’t start a fight,” Don’s mother, Beth, said, “but don’t back down from one.”
Don was big, a defensive tackle at Seneca High, but those who knew him best say that his body carried a gentle soul. He once noticed a woman walking without a jacket on a cold day. Don wasn’t far from his car, so why not give the woman the shirt off his back? He walked over, peeled off the shirt, and handed it over. He believed she needed it more than him.
It was that kind of sensibility that separated him years ago from the other broad-shouldered bouncers at the Jukebox bar. Bethany was there one night, and mutual friends introduced her to Don. She noticed something about him immediately.
“A gentleman,” she said this week. “The pure definition of a man.”
•••
They would’ve been married six years in July. Bethany said most days were sweet when they were together, and much of this past Sunday was no different. She had gone to see a play in nearby Carthage, and then she and Don met for frozen yogurt in Joplin.
When they returned to their home near the corner of 20th Street and Mississippi Avenue, Bethany said, the sky was greenish gray. They were watching television as the storm approached and the tornado sirens sounded.
Bethany said that she and Don saw the tornado closing in and had only a few seconds to decide what they’d do. Their house had no basement, and she said there wasn’t an opportunity to reach the crawlspace on the home’s rear.
“There was just no time,” she said. “It was just that fast.”
The safest place, she said, was the bathtub. She grabbed the pillows from their bed and brought them into the bathroom. She lay in the tub, and he quickly arranged the pillows on top of her.
As the tornado arrived and the home’s wood shutters began to fly, Don pressed himself on top of his wife, holding onto the tub’s rails as the storm came through.
•••
Three days later, two walls were left standing on the Lansaws’ home, and their possessions were strewn throughout the yard — fragments left from a house and two lives. Magazines and dresser drawers, clothes and a cardboard box labeled from when couple moved in. There wasn’t much left to the bathroom; the tub was still there, but it had become dislodged from the wall and had been filled with debris.
Bethany said she doesn’t know what caused her husband’s injury, saying that she noticed minutes after rising from the tub that he was hurt. Her voice trembling, Bethany said she’ll forever be uncertain if they could’ve prepared for the storm differently.
“For the rest of my life,” she said, “I’m going to wonder if that was the best decision. But it was the only decision that we could make.”
Bethany suffered only scrapes and bruises. She said there’s no doubt that, if her husband hadn’t shielded her, they both would’ve died. But, she said, Don wouldn’t allow that.
“He sacrificed himself for me,” she said. “If you talk to anybody who knows me, you know he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. As many times as people say that, it doesn’t make it easier to comprehend. But I’m always going to remember him as my hero.”
To reach Kent Babb, call 816-234-4386 or send e-mail to kbabb@kcstar.com.
Copyright 2011 The Kansas City Star
http://www.kansascity.com/2011/05/27/2909639/amid-loss-in-joplin-pure-love.html [with comments]
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Husband gave life to save wife from tornado
May 29, 2011
http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=241615
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Toll of 'deadliest' US tornado hits 142
May 28, 2011
http://www.presstv.com/detail/182205.html
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Doppler Radar - Joplin Missouri EF-5 Tornado - Sunday May 22, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVq3dyNiyBo
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May 22 Tornado Joplin, MO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrnRSSHz4dU [security camera on house on 27th Street; main damage path began about 2 blocks behind the camera, extending from 20th to 25th Streets]
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May 22 Tornado Joplin, MO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdM3WqIn08Y [same house, front yard]
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Security cams catch a twister on tape
Added On May 24, 2011
Security cameras record damage from a tornado in Kansas [the day before Joplin]. KTKA has more [ http://www.ktka.com/news/2011/may/23/security-camera-records-devastation-reading-tornad/ ].
http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2011/05/23/ks.security.cam.tornado.ktka
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Up until 1940s, Americans didn't even get tornado forecasts
A Kansas tornado in 1959, less than a decade after the Weather Bureau began issuing tornado forecasts.
By Sean Morris, CNN
May 24, 2011 -- Updated 1453 GMT (2253 HKT)
(CNN) -- The warnings seem almost ubiquitous today in this world of Doppler Radar and instant communication, but the word "tornado" actually used to be banned in weather forecasts.
Before the 1950s, there were no warnings that a tornado was about to occur.
"That's when the warning system we have now was just being developed," said Bob Henson of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.
"Most Americans never got a tornado warning," he said.
But what about radar?
"There was no radar," he said.
Before that, Americans had to endure decades of agonizing blows from Mother Nature, many of the victims taken unaware.
In 1882, 17 years after the Civil War ended, U.S. Army Signal Corps Sgt. John P. Finley was asked to investigate tornadoes and how they developed.
As Finley was doing his research, tornado forecasting came to a screeching halt when the Signal Corps banned the word "tornado" from official forecasts because they were concerned the word would cause widespread panic.
"They literally avoided the word up until the 1950s or so," Henson said. "They were a little concerned about the panic or the tools weren't strong enough to predict them," he said, "and quite frankly without radar, you couldn't forecast them."
Twisters were not measured in the same way they are now. Thus, experts now don't know whether the 1925 Tri-State tornado -- which killed about 695 people when it tore through Missouri, Illinois and Indiana -- was actually a single funnel or many, which is why it isn't officially considered the deadliest single tornado.
So the emphasis went on observing and reporting rather than forecasting.
The U.S. Weather Bureau started reporting tornadoes, thunderstorms, hailstorms, lightning and high winds at a few experimental locations across the United States in spring 1943. Gradually, forecasters started issuing forecasts for severe thunderstorms, but could not tell the time nor place.
As for tornado forecasts? Still off-limits.
A breakthrough happened in the late 1940s, when two Air Force officers identified conditions that were favorable for tornado formation in the southern Plains.
The first tornado forecast was issued March 20, 1948.
Six hours later, a twister slammed into Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. The tornado caused $6 million in damage, but no one was killed, thanks to a tornado safety plan that was implemented at the base after the forecast was issued.
The tornado bulletin brought the Air Force attention from the public and local media. However, tornado forecasts were only available to Air Force weather offices and were still not issued by the Weather Bureau.
Then came Radio Detection and Ranging, or radar.
During World War II, radar was invented to detect enemy ships and aircraft. Radar operators soon began to notice that rain would often obscure aircraft. This led to using radar to detect storms that could produce tornadoes.
Finally, in 1950, the ban on the word "tornado" in weather forecasts was lifted.
That was the same year official federal records about tornadoes -- in terms of their location, strength and damage inflicted -- were first kept.
In 1953, the U.S. Weather Bureau established the Severe Local Storms Center, known as SELS. The first tornado watches issued by SELS usually covered an average area of 27,000 square miles. Today, tornado and severe thunderstorm watches average 25,000 square miles.
In 1966, SELS was renamed the National Severe Storms Forecast Center. At this time, tornado and severe thunderstorm forecasts were renamed "watches" to correspond with products issued by the National Hurricane Center.
In the early 1990s, Doppler Weather Radar, or as it was more commonly known, Next Generation Weather Radar, was deployed at local National Weather Service forecast offices nationwide. Doppler radar allowed forecasters to see more than just precipitation. With the new radar, they could actually detect wind circulations within storms that could lead to tornado formation. Doppler weather radar was part of a wider modernization of forecast offices nationwide lasting nearly a decade.
"Today forecasters use a comprehensive system (to detect storms) but radar is the foundation because radar detects the circulation of winds that form tornadoes," Henson said. "Hand in hand with that are people on the ground who are trained storm-spotters. You always need eyes on the storm," he said.
After the deployment of Doppler weather radar, lead times for tornadoes were nearly doubled, from less than five minutes to around 10 to 13 minutes.
In October 1995, the National Severe Storms Forecast Center was renamed the Storm Prediction Center [ http://www.spc.noaa.gov/ ], and as part of the weather service's modernization program, the Storm Prediction Center was moved to Norman, Oklahoma.
Today, the Storm Prediction Center issues forecasts for severe thunderstorms as far as eight days out and is tasked with issuing severe thunderstorm and tornado watches in the United States.
Tornado warnings are issued by local National Weather Service forecast offices.
Even though forecasters can now identify conditions favorable for tornadoes, they still cannot predict exactly when and where tornadoes will touch down.
There lies the rub. Officials in Joplin, Missouri, confirmed at least 116 people dead after a twister smashed the city Sunday. Destructive tornadoes and severe storms tore through the South in late April, killing hundreds of people.
With all the advancements in storm technology, the question is simple: Why?
"That's the question of 2011," Henson said. "Why have so many people died in these tornadoes? That's the open question. It's partly because of the strength of these tornadoes. Also because they've hit populated areas."
While tools such as Doppler Radar detect winds within severe storms that could indicate a tornado may be imminent, many of these rotating storms do not go on to produce tornadoes.
Although tornado forecasting has remarkably improved over the last two decades with advanced forecasting techniques, weather satellites, numerical forecast models and Doppler weather radar, there is much about tornado forecasting that still remains a mystery.
Journalist Craig Johnson contributed to this report.
© 2011 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/05/23/tornado.history/index.html [with comments]
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Science Can't Design Away Tornadoes' Deadly Threat
by The Associated Press
WASHINGTON May 28, 2011, 10:38 pm ET
Storm science has greatly improved tornado warnings in recent years. But if that's led anyone into a sense of security, that feeling has taken a beating in recent weeks.
Super Outbreak 2011, on April 25-28, killed more than 300 people in the South and Midwest. Less than a month later, a devastating tornado took more than 120 lives around Joplin, Mo. This now could be the deadliest year for tornadoes since 1950, based on an assessment of National Weather Service figures.
This despite warnings of as much as 20 minutes, thanks to improved weather radar installed across the country in the 1990s. Before that, tornado warnings often weren't issued until a twister was sighted on the ground.
Scientists see a variety of factors that helped make this year's twisters deadlier — from La Nina to public complacency, from global warming to urban sprawl.
"We thought for the longest time physical science could get us by ... that we could design out of disaster," said meteorology professor Walker Ashley of Northern Illinois University. Now scientists are finding they need to take human nature into account.
What is clear is that certain factors add to the risk of death. The most vulnerable folks are those living in mobile homes and houses without basements. For a variety of reasons, a lot of homes don't have basements.
Twisters occurring on weekends — like the Joplin tornado — and at night tend to be greater killers because they catch people at home. At night, twisters are harder to see and sleeping people may not hear a warning.
Those less likely to be killed in a storm tend to be more educated and to have a plan in place beforehand.
In Sedalia, Mo., 30-year-old Sean McCabe had the right idea when the tornado struck, heading to the basement. He said the storm shoved him down the final flight of steps. He had scrapes and cuts on his hands, wrists, back and feet. Blood was visible in the house, and much of the roof of the house was gone.
"I saw little debris and then I saw big debris, and I'm like OK, let's go," said McCabe.
Having a plan was a lifesaver for Tuscaloosa's LaRocca Nursing Home in Alabama. As the storm howled, four dozen residents massed in the hallways as trees crashed down and a cloud of dust rained upon them. When the dust settled, the staff realized their drills had paid off. Not one patient was killed, and the worst injury among them was a bruise.
Hundreds have not been so lucky. The death toll reported Saturday by the city of Joplin stands at 139, which if correct puts this year's tornado death toll at 520 — exceeding the previous highest recorded death toll in a single year of 519 in 1953. But Missouri state officials counted 126 dead, a discrepancy that left unclear whether 2011 has yet set the modern record for tornado fatalities.
There were deadlier storms before 1950, but those counts were based on estimates and not on precise figures
The National Weather Service said 58 tornadoes touched down in Alabama on April 27, killing 238 people in that state alone and injuring thousands. Scores died in other states from twisters spawned by the same storm system. Put together, emergency management officials say the twisters left a path of destruction 10 miles wide and 610 miles long, or about as far as a drive from Birmingham to Columbus, Ohio.
Statewide, Alabama officials estimate there was enough debris to stack a football field a mile high with rubble.
Contributing to the massive loss of life is the growth of urban areas, suggested Marshall Shepherd, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Georgia.
"Historically, the central business districts of cities have not been hit that frequently," he explained. But as you increase the land area covered by homes and businesses, he said, "you're increasing the size of the dartboard."
An expanding population does increase exposure to the danger, agreed Ashley, who fears deaths could begin to rise in the future as a result of sprawl and more people living in vulnerable residences such as mobile homes.
If the Tuscaloosa and Joplin tornadoes had each been a few miles to the south, on farmland, little would be heard about them, Ashley said, but when extremely violent tornadoes mingle with urban sprawl "you're going to have a disaster."
"I hope this will be an outlier year, very much like Katrina was to hurricanes," he said in a telephone interview from a field trip to chase tornadoes.
But no one can guarantee that, and weather experts are becoming increasingly concerned about how people respond to tornado warnings.
"A lot of it is complacency," Ashley said. "The population seems to be becoming desensitized to nature. I don't know why."
Studies have shown that 15 to 20 minutes is the most effective amount of warning time, and longer warning times can increase deaths. Weather experts aren't sure why, but worry that people think that if a twister hasn't appeared in a certain amount of time, it must have been a false alarm.
Yet a long-track tornado can be on the ground for 30 miles.
"If you have a basement, you don't need 20 minutes warning, but if you are in a mobile home park you may need more than 20 minutes to find a shelter," commented Alan W. Black, a University of Georgia doctoral student and co-author with Ashley of a recent study of tornado and wind fatalities.
Jerry Brotzge, a research scientist at the Center for Analysis & Prediction of Storms, University of Oklahoma, said many people who hear warnings will look outside to see if they can see the tornado — "they need some kind of confirmation, they want to see it."
But the Joplin tornado was at least partly rain-wrapped, meaning that a powerful rainstorm obscured it from some directions and "they wouldn't have seen it coming."
"Even when people are sheltered in their homes, if they are not underground they can die," Brotzge added.
But asking people to evacuate an area is also a difficult decision, he said, "what if you have a traffic jam and the tornado hits that."
Ashley concluded: "The take-home is, people have to take personal responsibility for their lives."
Why there have been so many tornado threats this year is harder to say.
Viewing pictures of the tornado aftermath it's hard to overestimate the power of such storms, and records bear out how strong they can be.
"You see pictures of World War II, the devastation and all that with the bombing. That's really what it looked like," said Kerry Sachetta, the principal of a flattened Joplin High School. "I couldn't even make out the side of the building. It was total devastation in my view. I just couldn't believe what I saw."
And that movie image a few years ago was no joke: A cow was transported 10 miles by a twister in Iowa in 1878 and a tornado in Minnesota moved a headstone three miles in 1886.
One Joplin resident said a picture that was sucked off his house's wall was found in Springfield, 70 miles away. An insurance policy was found more than 40 miles from its original residence in Oklahoma in 1957 and a 210-mile trip was taken by a canceled check in Nebraska in 1915, according to a study several years ago by researchers at the University of Oklahoma and St. Louis University [and see the first item in the post to which this is a reply, and (items linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=62428465 and preceding].
Typically, tornadoes spawn in the clash between warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico and cooler, dry air from the north and west — conditions that mark Tornado Alley in the Midwest and South, the most common breeding grounds for twisters.
Factors in this year's excess may include La Nina, a periodic cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean which can affect weather worldwide. In a La Nina year there tend to be more tornadoes than average. If that is a factor, the good news is that La Nina is weakening and is expected to end in a month or so.
The meandering jet stream high in the atmosphere that directs the movements of weather also has been in a pattern that encourages warm Gulf air to move in and clash with drier air masses.
While studies of global warming have suggested it could cause more and stronger storms, National Weather Service Director Jack Hayes isn't ready to blame climate change — at least not yet — saying it's too soon to link individual events with the ongoing warming.
Tornado researcher Howard B. Bluestein of the University of Oklahoma says his best guess is this unusual outburst of twisters is due to natural variability of the weather.
"Sometimes you get a weather pattern in which the ingredients for a tornado are there over a wide area and persist for a long time. That's what we're having this year," he said.
"If we see this happen next year and the following year and the following year," then maybe climate change could be to blame, he said.
Whatever the reasons it's an extraordinary year for tornadoes and the worst may not be over. May is usually the peak month, but June traditionally gets lots of twisters, and they can occur in any month.
"You can never completely breathe easy," concluded Russell Schneider, director of the government's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.
Associated Press writers Nomaan Merchant, Alan Scher Zagier and Jim Salter in Joplin, Mo.; Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Ala.; and Kristi Eaton in Norman, Okla., contributed to this report.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=136743037 [no comments yet]
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2011 Tornado Fatality Information
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/torn/2011deadlytorn.html
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more at (items linked in) the posts preceding (and the inevitable posts to follow) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=63682547 (the above as originally posted over at Tornado Alley)
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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